Preview

Cafecito with Walt Disney Animation Studios

Join LatinX in Animation for a cafecito talk with Walt Disney Animation Studios as we discuss their upcoming feature film, Encanto. Joining us from Disney is Charise Castro Smith, the screenwriter and co-director of Encanto, as well as Yvett Merino, Producer of Encanto. This talk will be moderated by Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster-Jones, who is a creative executive at Walt Disney Animation Studios. We’ll walk through the creative journey of bringing Encanto to the big screen, and more specifically the creative process through a Latinx lens from Castro Smith and Merino.

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Charise Castro Smith
is a writer, producer, co-director and actor originally from Miami. Her playwrighting credits include El Huracán (Yale Rep), Feathers and Teeth (Goodman Theatre) and The Hunchback of Seville (Washington Ensemble Theatre/ Trinity Repertory Company). She is the writer and co-director of Disney Animation’s 2021 Feature film, Encanto.

Yvett Merino has worked in a variety of production capacities over the years at Walt Disney Animation Studios on some of the most popular animated features of all-time. Among her most recent credits are Production Manager on the Academy Award®-winning feature, Big Hero 6, as well as the Oscar®-nominated Moana. She is currently working as a Producer on the upcoming feature film, Encanto.  
 

Juan Pablo Reyes Lancaster Jones is a senior creative executive at Walt Disney Animation Studios that was born and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico. He has a background in engineering and contemporary art publishing, but made the transition into film and TV after getting his MFA at the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC. Since, he has mostly been working in creative development for both film and tv, animation and live action. Most recently, he worked on Disney’s Encanto.